Tag Archives: crop fires

Monitoring fires from space has significant advantages when compared to on-ground activity. Not only are wider areas easier to monitor, but there are obvious safety benefits too. The different ways this can be done have been highlighted through a number of reports over the last few weeks.

Firstly, NASA have released images from different instruments, on different satellites, that illustrate two ways of how satellites can monitor fires.

Acquired on the 25 April 2017, an image from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite showed widespread fire activity across the YucatÃ¡n Peninsula in South America. The image to the right is a natural colour image and each of the red dots represents a point where the instrumentâ€™s thermal band detected temperatures higher than normal.

False colour image of the West Mims fire on Florida/Georgia boundary acquired by MODIS on 02 May 2017. Data courtesy of NASA. NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response.

Compare this to a wildfire on Florida-Georgia border acquired from NASAâ€™s Aqua satellite on the 02 May 2017 using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). On the natural colour image the fires could only be seen as smoke plumes, but on the left is the false colour image which combines infrared, near-infrared and green wavelengths. The burnt areas can be clearly seen in brown, whilst the fire itself is shown as orange.

This week it was reported that the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre in India, has been combining remote sensing, geographical information systems and Global Positioning System (GPS) data to identify the burning of crop stubble in fields; it appears that the MODIS fire products are part of contributing the satellite data. During April, 788 illegal field fires were identified through this technique and with the GPS data the authorities have been able to identify, and fine, 226 farmers for undertaking this practice.

Imaged by Sentinel-2, burnt areas, shown in shades of red and purple, in the Marantaceae forests in the north of the Republic of Congo.Data courtesy of Copernicus/ESA. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2016), processed by ESA.

Finally, a report at the end of April from the European Space AgencyÂ described how images from Sentinel-1 and Senintel-2 have been combined to assess the amount of forest that was burnt last year in the Republic of Congo in Africa â€“ the majority of which was in Marantaceae forests. As this area has frequent cloud cover, the optical images from Sentinel-2 were combined with the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images from Sentinel-1 that are unaffected by the weather to offer an enhanced solution.

Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data detect and monitor forest fires at a finer temporal and spatial resolution than previously possible, namely 10 days and 10 m, although the temporal resolution will increase to 5 days later this year when Sentinel-2B becomes fully operational.Â Through this work, it was estimated that 36 000 hectares of forest were burnt in 2016.

Given the danger presented by forest fires and wildfires, greater monitoring from space should improve fire identification and emergency responses which should potentially help save lives. This is another example of the societal benefit of satellite remote sensing.